"Get Smart" directed by Peter Segal [review]

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Abstract

Like many people who mis-spent their youth watching too much television, I can
remember a golden age of American TV comedy: it was characterised, for me, by the
mid-1960s series created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, Get Smart. Born as a sort
of comedic reaction to some of the more serious cold-war thrillers like Fail Safe and
its Seven Days in May, Get Smart reduced the espionage landscape to an ongoing
battle for supremacy between two shadowy spy agencies: the bad guys, K.A.O.S., and
the good guys, CONTROL. Headed up by bungling spy-hero Maxwell Smart (who
was of course anything but), and his wiser and far more competent “side-kick”, Agent
99, the CONTROL agency routinely foiled plots to explode bombs, assassinate
Presidents, and generally destroy the balance of good and evil.